A Punchomancer is a Human or Orcish Wizard that sacrifices most or all of their potions to aggressively drain their glyphs of conversion potential. The result is a character that can get over 100 damage from natural levels and conversion alone, while also possessing nearly every glyph in the game. It is an extremely fun thing to do and everyone who hasn't done this should do it right now.

The most fun variant is probably the Human Wizard. Take Extra Glyphs, try to snatch up all of the runes at first level, and then convert shop junk and potions to extract an alarming 560 CP out of your glyphs. Extra Glyphs just barely damages your CP total (560 vs the vanilla 600) and having 7 glyphs all at once is just so much fun. The lower CP also means that you can drain a glyph in 8 conversions instead of 10, which is nice, and you actually get more CP per item sacrificed with Extra Glyphs than you do without it (although you run out of total CP earlier). Because the Human doesn't get as much immediate benefit from conversion, you can drip feed yourself CP if you are hesitant to burn your potions, but you'll probably have the most fun if you just let go and and accept that this is going to be a parched run.

For more serious challenges, take an Orc, and replace Extra Glyphs with More Attack. The Orc should also grab as many of the glyphs as he can early, but will want to convert the more situational ones right away, sacrificing long term flexibility for immediate here-and-now power. With so much early CP, you will be equal or superior to a Human all the way up to level 8.

There are all kinds of supporting strategies you can use, but I was especially pleased at how well this works with an Earthmother prep. With so many glyphs, you are guaranteed to have at least one utility glyph that makes managing her plant spam easier. IMAWAL makes one-fight level-ups possible, which is something all casters want. Vineform complements your punching power at early levels and Clearance gives Wizards (and only Wizards) exactly enough mana for 2 Fireballs, letting you orbitally nuke the final boss.

Update: Just took an orcish punchomancer to Namtar and found a GG altar. Picked off the 9s and most of the 8s by 7th level. Went down into the Underworld with 138 damage. I kept getting confused and thinking I was playing a Rogue. I nuked Namtar's physically resistant form with fire (because I am a Wizard as well as a pugilist), but I could have won it punching style if I had wanted to.

This is so much fun.

Second Update: Just got Faithless in Naga City. Tried to get Parched as well but I ended up needing both kegs in the arena. I just barely finished, coming within a few tiles of knowing the ultimate shame of losing to Kinisssch. Still, I've never gone Faithless in NC before.

And boom, purist NC. The Frank wave is a bitch but otherwise the strategy's golden. More so if you got poison, which I didn't on either shot... that said, had bloodtopowa both times, and got getindare + byceps on the second. I went with Scholar's Pact and Dracul but I think maybe Mystera would be better in hindsight (or maybe Mystera->Dracul).

I think I like Orc better than human simply because there's a lot of bonus damage around to augment that base damage increase, and more conversion dings = more mentally pleasing. Also, the female Orc Wizard looks wicked awesome.